Home Fires Burning

by Robert Inman

  “ ‘Lo, Whit. How are you?”

  Whit blinked behind his thick glasses. “Pretty busy. Still got a lot of Christmas cards. Some folks always wait too late to mail their Christmas cards and here I am the day after, with more mail than I oughta have.”

  “Mail’s mail, I guess,” Jake said, shuffling absently through his own stack.

  “No, not at all,” Whit said. “A Christmas card is first class. I got to give priority to first class.”

  Jake looked up at him.

  “Take for instance some business sends a bulk mail flyer and it arrives the day after Christmas,” Whit went on. “Regulations say I got to get the first class taken care of first. That’s why they call it first class. So some businessman’s trying to make a living and his bulk mail flyer has got to sit there while I take care of folks who didn’t mail their Christmas cards on time.” Whit seemed affronted by the untidiness of it.

  “I see what you mean. Yeah.”

  “Regulations are regulations. I got a letter from Arthur this morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s in France now. Just made staff sergeant not long ago, and now they’re sending him to Officer Candidate School. He says there’s a big shortage of lieutenants.”

  Jake tried to conjure up an image of Whit’s boy Arthur, but all he could remember was a kid of ten or so in overalls, no shirt, bare feet, hanging around the back door of the post office because Whit wouldn’t let him inside. Regulations.

  “He’ll make a good officer,” Jake said. “He’s a good boy.”

  “Yeah,” Whit said, nodding. “I just want to get him home. You know what I mean?” He looked at Jake closely, waiting for something.

  “I’ll be glad to see all the boys home myself,” Jake said evenly. “I’ll be glad to see things get back to normal.”

  “Normal. That’s right. I just want everything to get settled down again.” He said it fervently, so much so that it took Jake aback.

  Jake thought about it as he walked the block to the newspaper, unlocked the door, turned the sign in the window from the side that said GONE to the side that said BACK, hung his overcoat on the rack by the door, and sat down at his desk to sort through the stack of notes and papers he had brought back from his rounds.

  He thought about “normal,” and he thought that there was no such thing anymore and probably never would be again. The war had changed all that. The war had taken what people had been used to and turned it upside down. People had lived in this town and a thousand others like it in pretty much the same way for years and years. And then suddenly the war had changed it all completely and irreversibly in the space of a few months. Jake suspected that the changes themselves were only the half of what bothered folks. It was the suddenness of it, the enormity of it, and the suspicion that once things could change this drastically, they could change again, that lives would never again operate on an even keel. “Normal” went right out the window.

  Now, if H. V. Kaltenborn was right, they were about to get an inkling of just how right their suspicions were, because the war would soon be over and the boys would be coming home, bringing with them all their baggage: the wounds, the fears, the wonders, the places they had been, and the things they had seen. They would be forever and profoundly altered by it, and they would bring all that baggage back and set it down in this town and then the town would undergo another upheaval. Some of the boys would stay around awhile and then they would get antsy about things, having seen something of the world, and they would leave — taking some of their baggage with them, but leaving some behind — and there would be still more upheaval. And then those who stayed would have their own ideas about things, some of them strange and troubling perhaps, and they would be making a place for themselves and their ideas. That meant that folks like Whit Hennessey and George Poulos and the coffee crowd at Biscuit Brunson’s cafe would have to make room or be shouldered aside. These men who had been the town would become boring old farts who sat around and scratched at their dandruff and talked about the past, but whose experiences paled in comparison with all the young men had seen and felt. They would be surplus goods, like old tanks and airplanes rusting in the weeds, another kind of leftover from the war. And that hurt. It was hard enough growing old, and hard enough going through the upheaval of war and the end of war, but to have them happen together … well, little wonder that folks might get riled up at the thought of a flap over a war memorial. It wasn’t so much the memorial itself, he suspected, as it was all the other.

  But should that make a damn to Jake Tibbetts and his newspaper? Should he pull in his horns on this thing he felt strongly about, just because it got folks upset? No, he had had the town’s bowels in an uproar over one thing or another for as long as he had been running the Free Press. He had always spoken his mind, even when it hurt, even when he had been dead wrong. That was what a newspaper was supposed to do.

  Ah, but there was this other thing, and gentle Fog Martin, who would never hurt a fly, had gone right to the heart of it. Just why was Jake Tibbetts opposed to a war memorial? Was it on sacred principle or was it because of Henry, that wretched ghost who had suddenly come to life so that he could confound Jake with his mess and confusion all over again? Come now, Jake, be honest with yourself.

  He sat there a long time, trying to be honest with himself, then realized suddenly that it had gotten dark outside. He was hungry and grubby. He hadn’t had a bath in more than two days and the stubble of beard on his face felt like a wire-bristle brush. The tickle at the back of his throat had gotten steadily worse during the day. And he still had made no provisions for lodging himself for the night. He thought of the stack of newsprint in the back shop and shuddered. And then his anger came flooding back, the humiliation of being routed from his own home by a bull-headed woman. No, by God, he would not spend another night on top of a stack of newsprint. He would not, by God, live at the newspaper.

  Jake pushed open the heavy oak and leaded-glass front door of the Regal Hotel and stood for a moment in the empty entrance hall, thinking that he had not been in the place since he was a boy.

  It had been known then as the Widow Whichard’s Boardinghouse and Jake remembered it as a warm, casual, cluttered place with rich smells wafting from the kitchen just back of the big dining room, mingling with the aroma of the boarders’ cigars. It had a wide front porch where, in the warm months, the guests could take the air after supper in green wicker rocking chairs, protected from the setting sun by dark green lattice blinds that rolled up and down and gave the house, when they were extended, the look of an aging gentleman with droopy eyelids.

  Now, in winter, the rockers and blinds had been stored away and the porch was bare, the windows shuttered against the cold. The place had changed hands several times over the years, and the present owner was a widower named Grayson who had renamed it the Regal Hotel and hung a neatly lettered wooden sign from a metal post out front to prove it. Inside, it was cold, austere, proper. Grayson had regalized it. There was a coatrack, coatless, just to the right of the front door; an umbrella stand, umbrella-less, next to the coat-rack; a plain armchair upholstered in a shiny bottle-green material next to the umbrella stand. To his right, an archway opened into the dining area — the table as empty as his stomach — and to his left was the hotel desk, apparently another Grayson touch. It had a broad wooden counter with a bell and a guest book, and behind it on the wall was a shelf divided into numbered pigeonholes. There was a key in one pigeonhole, a small stack of mail in another.

  Jake walked over to the desk, turned the guest book around, examined the entries. The last had been four days ago, an E. Thurmond Broadus of St. Louis, representing the Foot-Pleasure Company. Shoe salesman. Jake had met him before in Hamblin’s Mercantile, a red-faced beefy man with a big nose and the faint smell of leather about him.

  Jake turned the book back around and tapped on the bell. Its echo dingled tinnily off the polished wooden floor and the plastered walls. He waited perhaps a mi
nute and then tapped again, harder this time, and after a moment the door behind the desk opened a crack and a woman peered out — plump-faced, hair in curlers, face shiny with cold cream.

  Jake said, “I need a room.”

  “How long?”

  “The night. For starters.”

  The woman eyed him suspiciously. “You aren’t local, are you?”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t let overnight to locals,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  She sniffed. “We got our reputation to think of. You start letting overnight rooms to locals, first thing you know they’ll be using ’em for things besides sleeping, if you know what I mean.”

  Jake nodded. “Brings out the beast in a man, don’t it.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Lust,” Jake said. “And who might you be, madam?”

  “Mrs. Grayson,” she said, with a lift of her chin. “The new Mrs. Grayson. We was married Christmas Eve.”

  “You’re not from these parts?” Jake asked.

  “Taylorsville,” she said. “And who are you?”

  Jake drew himself up. “I am the Reverend Sylvester Pomfret of St. Louis. Your hostelry,” he indicated the premises with a wave of his hand, “has been recommended to me by a member of my congregation, E. Thurmond Broadus, who I believe lay under this very roof not four nights ago. Represents the Foot-Pleasure Company. Admirable fellow, though I’ve never seen a bigger nose on a man. Anyhow, Brother Thurmond speaks highly of your accommodations and your table. Have I got the wrong Regal?”

  Mrs. Grayson didn’t say anything for a moment. She just stood there and looked at Jake, and then she leaned over the counter and looked down at his feet. “Where’s your satchel?”

  “Ahem. My valise was … ah … stolen. Yes, stolen. On the train. I am as you see me. I require only a bed for the night and then I shall quit this miserable place.”

  Mrs. Grayson gave him a good once-over. “You don’t look like a minister,” she said finally.

  “Oh,” Jake said, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, “if you only knew what I have been through these last few days.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Jake leaned over the counter toward her. “My good woman, I will tell you the whole sad story if you could find it in your Christian heart to give me a bit of bread and a glass of cold milk. I am faint with hunger.”

  “Well,” she looked him over again, “you can’t be too careful these days, you know, what with the war going on. Especially with these young fellows. But an older gentleman like yourself …” she trailed off. “Well, I had to ask. Mr. Grayson is laid up with a cold, and he told me not to let overnight to no locals.”

  “How right you are,” Jake nodded. She took his two dollars and had him sign the guest book, which he did with a flourish, affixing the initials D.D.M. after his name for a bit of academic flair, and then she took him to the kitchen and warmed a plate of turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, and carrot cake. Jake tried not to wolf it, but he bore down on the plate hungrily, half-listening to the drone of Mrs. Grayson’s voice as she launched into a monologue about her sister Erma, who had been afflicted with especially painful female cramps until a young revivalist laid hands on her in a tent meeting and expunged whatever succubus had hold of her plumbing. Erma, it seemed, had gone off with him to continue the benefit of his ministries, but somewhere along the way she had strayed again and had ended it all by jumping from the eleventh floor of a Chicago hotel in 1939.

  Jake nodded occasionally and let her drone, and as he finished off the plateful of food, it occurred to him that the Regal Hotel was the most temporary of lodgings. He wouldn’t be here at all, with a full belly and a place to sleep, had Grayson himself appeared at the counter. How the hell could he know the Regal didn’t let overnight to locals? He never set foot in the place. And if he tried to stay on, Grayson would find out who he was and kick him out on his ass and the whole town would get a good laugh over it. Reverend Sylvester Pomfret. Gad! So he would stay the night, leave quietly in the morning, and let tomorrow night take care of itself. Right now, he was too bone-tired to care much.

  “God help us,” he muttered.

  “That’s what I said,” Mrs. Grayson sighed. “They said Erma hit feet first and it scrunched her up so bad her ankles was up around her collarbones. They brought her home in a little bitty coffin like they bury babies in.” She paused, pondering it for a moment, then gave Jake a long look. “What are you here for, anyhow?”

  “I had a vision,” Jake said, before he caught himself.

  “A what?”

  Ah, shit, Jake thought, forging on. “I was laying there in my bed in St. Louis two nights ago, and I awoke from a sound sleep to find an angel of the Lord sitting on my portmanteau.”

  “What?”

  “My suitcase. The good fellow had apparently dragged it out of the closet and was sitting there on it with his arms folded across his chest. Like this,” Jake showed her. “And he said to me, as clear as you please, ‘Sylvester Pomfret, go witness.’ And then he vanished. Well, what was I to do? I leaped from my bed that instant, packed my valise, and made my way to the train station.”

  “But what happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said something about a sad story.”

  “Ah, yes.” Jake rose from his chair, picked up his coat, and began edging toward the doorway. “Already, the hand of fate was upon the venture. I had barely seated myself on the train when a voice in my ear said, ‘Go to the last car.’ I did, and there I found a young man, in the depths of despair from riotous living, about to fling himself from the rear platform to a certain death. So I fetched him a blow upside the head” — Jake smacked the air with his fist — “and when he came to his senses I preached the grace of God to him. I am sorry to say that when he left the train in Cairo, Illinois, he took with him my portmanteau and I was left with the clothes on my back and a small sum of cash in my pocket.”

  “Good Lord,” Mrs. Grayson said.

  “It has left me feeble from fatigue,” Jake said, letting his shoulders slump wearily. “I must get my rest.”

  “Shall I see you up?” she asked, handing Jake his key as he backed out of the kitchen into the hallway.

  “Oh, no. I can quite manage.”

  “Second room on the right,” she called after him as he climbed the stairs. “You want me to bang on your door in the morning?”

  “God bless you, no,” Jake called back.

  The second-floor hallway was dark, but he found the room with the aid of the dim light filtering up the stairs from the first floor, let himself in, closed the door, felt along the wall just inside for a light switch, found none, then opened the door again and stood there and let his eyes get accustomed to the semidarkness until he could just barely make out the naked bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. He pulled the string, glanced around at the stark furnishings of the room — flaking iron bedstead, marble-topped washstand, battered chifforobe. Regal, my ass, he thought. The ministry is hell. He shuddered in the chill, then switched the light off again, put on his overcoat, pulled back the covers, climbed into bed, and slept.

  He could tell the instant he awoke that it was late. The light around the edges of the yellowed window shade was strong, the flat iron-gray light of an overcast morning well along. He groaned, and then winced with pain from the raw open wound his throat had become. While he had slept like death itself, the cold had seized him full force. Now he was bathed in sweat, flushed with fever. His eyes burned and his head felt as if it had been stuffed full of lard. Aw my gawd, he tried to say, but nothing came out. He sat up in bed, shuddering with a sudden chill. He drew the overcoat around him and tried again to speak. Aaaarrrgh. Nothing. His voice was gone. He sat there in agony for a moment, staring at the window shade, then extricated himself from the tangled bedclothes and set his feet gingerly on the floor. Every joint ached. He slumped, face in hands, and thought of wh
at a pitiful sack of manure he had become in two short days. Vanquished from his own home, gossiped about in every kitchen and business establishment, forced to take refuge in a flophouse posing as a preacher, filthy, smelly, stubble-faced, and now feeling his vital juices ebbing from every agonized pore of his body. He thought fleetingly of death, surcease from sorrow. He could just lie back in the bed, pull the covers up to his chin, and let death steal quietly over him like a gray shadow.

  And then suddenly, for some reason, he thought about the war memorial. He remembered that he had dreamed of it, sometime during a night purpled by feverish dreams — a hideous giant obelisk on the courthouse lawn, casting an enormous shadow across the sidewalk in front of Biscuit Brunson’s cafe. People stood all around gazing up at its marble face, etched with the names of millions of dead, growing up, up out of the ground like a haunted beanstalk until it was taller than the courthouse itself. Jake was somewhere in the crowd and Hilton Redlinger drove by in the fire truck, scattering the throng, stopping next to Jake, pointing up at the memorial. “Where’s Henry?” he cried. “Where’s Henry?” Jake tried to speak, but nothing came out.

  Goddamn ’em all. They wanted a war memorial, did they? A monument to the waste and misery of war? A tribute to upheaval and anarchy? Well, they wouldn’t get it without a fight!

  Jake jerked upright, head pounding, heart racing. He gasped for breath and felt a wave of dizziness sweep over him and fell back on the bed while the room whirled around him, tilting crazily like a carnival ride gone haywire. He lay there for a long time with his eyes clinched tight until it slowed and then stopped. Then he calmed himself, thinking as he did that he was a sick old man approaching sixty-five and that there might not be too many fights left in this pitiful sack of manure, so he better get his ass up and out of the Regal Hotel and gird himself for battle.

  Easier said than done. It was not quite as late as he at first thought — his pocket watch said seven-thirty — but it was the worst possible time for him to be stirring about in the Regal. The hallway was empty when he opened the door to his room, but he could hear a droning chorus of voices from the dining room down below. It sounded like half the town down there, talking with their mouths full. He looked down at the other end of the hall. There was no back stairway, only a window. He considered it fleetingly, then imagined himself crashing through the roof of the back stoop while one of the hired cooks screamed in terror, or impaling himself on a nandina bush. No, there was no way out but the front stairs, and they emptied into the entrance hall just at the opening to the big dining room. It would have to be quick.